CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 4: Rodrigo Chaves awards Nayib Bukele Costa Rica’s highest diplomatic honors and receives dozens of Salvadoran soldiers in Costa Rica —which abolished its Army in 1948— before getting permission from the legislature. Donald Trump taps top Republican foreign policymaker Marco Rubio, a staunch critic of Nicaragua, as secretary of state. He also nominates Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, head of the El Salvador Caucus, to lead the Department of Justice. Daniel...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 3: In congratulating Donald Trump on his return to the White House, Nayib Bukele flashes his teeth at his critics. The Honduran foreign minister says a hardening of U.S. immigration policy will “affect the whole region.” An El Faro investigation reveals that, while Bukele was running for reelection last year, the Office of the Presidency bought plots of land around his personal residence — despite the fact that a presidential residence already exists. A...

Introducing Central America in Minutes: a weekly podcast from El Faro English where we cover our breaking investigations, the splashiest headlines from the region, and the stories swept underneath the rug. Subscribe on major podcast platforms to receive a new episode every Friday. This trailer was written by Roman Gressier, the editor of El Faro English, and narrated with reporter Yuliana Ramazzini. Production and original soundtrack by Omnionn. El Faro English translates —and now...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 2: A verdict is expected soon in the trial of retired General Benedicto Lucas García, one of the most emblematic Guatemalan military leaders of the armed conflict, on charges of genocide against the Maya Ixil people. Also in Guatemala City, former Nicaraguan political prisoners who were received by the Arévalo administration and U.S. State Department in early September struggle to get by as they await the promised adjustment of their refugee status. In El...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 1: After spending 813 days in prison and facing a slate of procedural irregularities, leading Guatemalan newspaperman Jose Rubén Zamora will await retrial under house arrest. In El Salvador, the anti-mining environmentalists known as the ‘Santa Marta Five’ are vindicated as a judge dismisses the case against them mounted by the Bukele-controlled Attorney General’s Office. With under two weeks until the U.S. election, Alianza Américas executive director Dulce...

President Xiomara Castro has answered scathing new evidence of drug ties against her husband and brother-in-law by accusing the military, opposition, and U.S. Embassy of plotting a coup d’état. Rixi Moncada, the leading presidential pre-candidate for the ruling party, has been named minister of defense, portending a wider crisis given that the military, which she will oversee, is the guarantor of the November 2025 elections.

In the chaotic first week of the Covid pandemic, El Salvador paid a Virgin Islands company $27 million USD to provide milk powder for its hungry citizens — but the shell firm overcharged and under-delivered, pocketing $7 million, a government audit found.

Nayib Bukele’s Saturday inauguration was an ironclad display of his control of the military and the obedience he expects from Salvadorans. The Biden administration completed its diplomatic U-turn and received applause from San Salvador, who also flirted over the weekend with a delegation of far-right figureheads featuring Donald Trump Jr.

The now de facto president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and his family clan have risen above our laws to assume the throne, without any institution capable of imposing limits to their constitutional trampling. The authoritarian regime has become a dictatorship.

June 1 marks the inauguration of Nayib Bukele’s unconstitutional second term. Senior diplomatic delegations including from Argentina, Ecuador, Spain, China, and the United States are arriving in San Salvador. But underneath the expected fanfare is an ever-thickening atmosphere of fear among families upended by the state of exception and tensions following dubious police allegations of a bomb plot by former FMLN leaders.

If Bukele, his attorney general, and his police truly had fighting corruption on their agenda, the government would be purged from bottom to top. On the contrary, the function of El Salvador’s top prosecutor is to protect the corrupt and enable corruption for the home team.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine will also affect the global fight on climate change: the fighting has increased greenhouse gas emissions in Europe and damaged Ukraine’s renewable energy infrastructure.

In the municipal vote on Sunday, just one mayor’s office out of 44 fell out of Bukele’s control. After an election season where legislative and municipal gerrymandering proved far more effective for the president than his overwhelming popularity, opposition representatives are again preaching unity and, above all, the need to recover their contact with Salvadoran society.

During a private meeting on Tuesday with delegates from political parties, TSE President Dora Martínez suggested that the failure of the vote-count process on Sunday could have been intentionally provoked. She said she will file a complaint to the Attorney General.

Over 97 percent of Salvadorans in the U.S. voted for Nayib Bukele, who claimed a commanding electoral victory Sunday with over 80 percent of total votes. Opposition parties have been reduced to a minimum, capping an unconstitutional process totally controlled by the ruling party.

Comparisons to U.S. gerrymandering, electoral use of public funds, lack of regulation of the diaspora vote, and the constitutional ban on reelection overshadow the Sunday election, when Nayib Bukele is expected to garner wide support. International monitors will assess on Sunday whether the vote is not only free but also fair.

Audio recordings, screenshots, and a gang leader’s testimony reveal that the Bukele administration was willing to pay over one million dollars to a Mexican drug cartel and the 18th Street gang if they helped rearrest MS-13 leader “Crook” in time for the 2024 elections. One of the highest Salvadoran police officials negotiated for ten months with a fugitive gang leader who was at the same time in contact with U.S. authorities.

Élmer Canales Rivera waived a speedy trial in a Long Island court on Thursday, so he could have more time to prepare his defense. Following his capture last November in Mexico, the Justice Department is prosecuting him on terrorism charges.

A group of campesinos from El Salvador’s Jiquilisco Bay have filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office against a Salvadoran Navy sergeant, accusing him of providing false testimony that was decisive in the sentencing of a minor to ten years in prison. The boy’s case is the first conviction of a resident of their island under the state of exception.

Less than five months before the Salvadoran elections, the diplomatic corps has gone silent regarding presidential reelection. The US, which two years ago condemned consecutive periods, now takes cover behind voters’ “right to determine their own future.” Amid doubts about a fair playing field, it is unclear what real impact OAS and EU monitors can have.

The National Civil Police of El Salvador profiled ruling-party legislator Bladimir Barahona in June 2021 as part of a human trafficking ring. That November, Interpol El Salvador alerted its Washington office that a company owned by Barahona, who sits on the Financial Committee of the Legislative Assembly, funnels “money from unknown sources,” which could constitute money laundering.

The Rancho Bejuco massacre took place on July 29, 1982, in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, during the de facto government of General Efraín Ríos Montt. It exemplifies the genocidal scorched-earth policies implemented during his 17 months in power.

The Biden administration has banned from U.S. territory the prosecutor and judge who attempted to interfere in Guatemala’s run-off election and who incarcerated journalist José Rubén Zamora. The sanctions also include a dozen Nicaraguan officials involved in the banishment of political prisoners but steer clear of the inner circles of the presidents of El Salvador and Honduras in a sign of a shifting U.S. strategy in Central America.

On May 30, Salvadoran police arrested two Bureau of Prisons officials including Wilfredo Hernández Molina, right-hand man of Vice Minister of Security Osiris Luna, for allegedly charging bribes from drug traffickers for prison benefits. Two years ago the top aide had been named as an accomplice to Luna in the now-shuttered corruption probe called “Operation Cathedral”.